Joe Gores - 32 Cadillacs

“No, I’m fine,” said Sam Hood.

If Sam Hood thought Adam Wells sleazy — a compliment in Sam’s book — he also knew Adam Wells was making enough of those big fat greasy bucks everyone yearned for to tool along Ventura Boulevard in a white Seville STS four-door notchback that went for $40,000 stripped. And this baby was loaded . Ultra-soft leather seats, hand-fitted to the car with French upholstery seams; air, Delco AM/FM stereo deck and C/D player, custom phaeton roof, power everything... still had paper plates and the new-car smell.

Like riding on a cloud.

“Trade every year,” Wells was bragging. “One a these, then a Lincoln Town Car, then a Chrysler Imperial.” A chuckle. “Gotta keep the Big Three going, y’know.” Sam Hood knew. He also knew he wanted some of Wells’s big fat greasy bucks. Wells added, “Yeah, strictly American, that’s me.”

“Except for TV sets?” Sam put a sly question mark on it.

“The TV sets are business .” Wells slapped the steering wheel with beringed fingers. “This here is personal. This here is love of country.” He gestured with the stogie. “There she is, just ahead.”

“She” was a nearly completed motel on the south side of the Boulevard near Tujunga that damn near popped Sam’s eyes out of his head. Behind it rose green-foliaged hills studded with million-dollar homes. There was an obscene amount of construction going on along Ventura, but none of it was more opulent than this block-square U-shaped motel complex.

Wells pulled the Seville over to the curb to gesture.

“In the middle there’s gonna be a fountain. Palm trees, lots of shrubbery. We got a Spago’s coming in, shops, boutiques, indoor an’ outdoor pool, sauna, a World Gym...”

Having a little trouble with his voice, Sam asked, “How many color TV sets did you say you’re gonna need from me?”

“I didn’t, but maybe three hundred to start. Sure, that’s chicken feed, but we’ll double-deck next year and’ll need another five hundred. Not much even then, I know, but—”

“No, no — no job too small,” said Sam quickly.

You bet your butt, thought Wasso. Three hundred would clear out this gadjo’s stock on hand — he’d checked. That’s why Wasso had picked him even though he might be connected. A dangerous man, perhaps, but hungry enough to be stupid.

When Wells had wanted “a few” color consoles for “his” motel at a discount off the already low wholesale delivery price that was Sam’s stock-in-trade, Hood had pictured a couple dozen run-down units huddled around a postage-stamp pool with dead bugs floating around in it. But this ...

This was money in the bank. His entire stock in one transaction! Since all his TVs fell off the back of the truck, anyway — with the driver’s reimbursed cooperation — he was going to make a dizzying amount of money off this turkey.

Of course if Sam Hood, even tough as he was and with his underworld connections, had known this turkey was a Gyppo, he would have jumped from the Caddy and sewn his pockets shut. But he didn’t.

“I’d love to show you around the place,” Wells was saying regretfully, “but I’m doing lunch at LAX with a couple of Japanese investors between planes. So we’d better—”

“There’s Jap money in this?” asked Hood, awed for sure.

“Nah, they don’t fool with penny-ante crap like this. We got a seven-golf-course deal cooking that...” He broke off to laugh. “No you don’t. Enough said about that.” He opened his door. “I see the foreman there, can you wait for just a minute?”

Tomeshti was already out of the car and walking over to a man checking things off on a clipboard. He pointed at the roof.

“How high is that?”

The workman frowned at him. “Who the hell are you?”

“Who the hell am I?” Tomeshti took a step closer and pounded a fist into his other hand. “A taxpayer, that’s who.” He started away toward the Seville, then turned back to point at the nonplussed workman and yell, “And don’t you forget it, pal!”

He got back in, pushing blood into his face to flush it.

“Trouble?” Hood couldn’t help asking as they pulled away from the curb in a harsh shriek of rubber.

“Nah — it’s just that you say three hundred TV sets are coming tomorrow, the rooms gotta be ready, does he say they’ll be ready? Hell no. He says...” He shook his head, then brightened. “To hell with all that. Let’s go over to your office and sign that contract for those TVs. I’ll take delivery tomorrow no matter what the damn foreman says. And pay you for all three hundred sets right then.” He looked over at Sam Hood as the big Caddy lanced through the Ventura Boulevard traffic. “A check on the corporation account is all right, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” said a dazzled Sam Hood. “Money in the bank.”

Dan Kearny’s rental Cutlass took the Silver Lake off-ramp from the Hollywood Freeway to a wide messy street of narrow messy retail businesses with wide messy signs over them. Furniture stores. Karate studios. Doughnut shops. Hairdressers. Clothing stores spilling racks out across the sidewalk full of the sort of flowered sport shirts that make you want to roll a pack of cigarettes up in one sleeve. Mostly brown faces crowding the sidewalks, a lot of Habla Español signs.

After an hour of cruising he spotted the billboard:

Beneath that was:

Kearny thought he got a glimpse of the con, and started to chuckle. He found an open meter, parked and locked, walked back. Bright sunlight, tempered with acrid smog felt in nose and throat, was hot on the shoulders of his San Francisco-weight wool suit. He looked into the empty storefront through recently washed windows. Floor fresh-swept, racks waiting to receive their sale TVs. Sales counter in the back, glassed-in office partition behind that. Realtor’s sign still in the window. Phone number and an address in the next block.

No Cadillac in the narrow dirt parking lot out in back, not that Kearny had expected any when he saw the empty showroom. He wove his way through the polylingual crowd to the realty office; he had to know who Tomeshti was and when he would show.

Dusty pictures of commercial bargains nobody wanted crowded the front windows. Inside it was a narrow storefront with four battered hardwood desks down one wall and a manager’s office in the rear. Latinas at two of the desks, the others empty.

A blonde with metallic hair that could break a fingernail came up from the office. She reeked of musk and greed. Too many teeth, a face-lift that hadn’t helped blunt her icepick eyes.

“E. Dana Straub. ’Nye do for ya?”

“The empty storefront in the next block—”

“Din’t you see the billboard?”

“Televisions factory-direct?” He shrugged. “Place is empty right now, today, and right now, today, it’s just what I need for my retail electronics store.”

E. Dana Straub got a look compounded equally of greed and regret. “Mr. Wells has already signed the contract.”

“ Danny Wells?” demanded Kearny in delight. “I can—”

“Adam Wells.”

“Oh. But don’t matter — I’ll sublease from him instead.”

“The terms of his lease stipulate no sublets.”

Kearny brought out his flash roll — a hundred wrapped around a couple of dozen ones — and leaned suggestively across the counter with a dirty look in his eyes.

“Lease contracts can get lost...”

She sighed regretfully. “We remodeled to meet his needs, and Mr. Wells is moving his stock in tomorrow. At the end of the week he’s giving me a check for the entire year’s lease...”